Joe Namath is a 68-year-old grandpa now, living a retirees’ life in Florida. His prime remains vivid in the minds of football fans old enough to remember his Super Bowl triumph with the New York Jets, his playboy ways, his semi-acting career.

Younger fans only know him through the flickering highlights -- Beaver Falls, Pa., through Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide and on to Broadway – and one unfortunate drunken night on national TV, where a spasm of some kind from that playboy prime caused Namath to embarrass himself during an sideline interview with Suzy Kolber.

(The guys on “Pardon the Interruption” can’t say the word “struggling” without referencing Namath’s pronunciation that night.)

It’s all recalled in “Namath,” a new HBO documentary debuting at 8 p.m. Saturday (Jan. 28). Even the Kolber moment, which sets up Namath’s late-in-life transition to sobriety.

The documentary “features excerpts from 15 hours of conversations between Namath and producers from HBO Sports and NFL Films,” writes Richard Sandomir @ NYTimes.com. “He acts as the genial host of his story, talking directly into the camera as if he were wooing Raquel Welch.”

Sandomir continues:

Sobriety becomes him as a storyteller. He is candid, funny and dramatic (watch him describe his first meeting in Alabama Coach Bear Bryant’s imperial observatory tower in Tuscaloosa). He gesticulates often as his biography rolls by: the multisport schoolboy star of Beaver Falls, Pa., becomes Bryant’s quarterbacking stud, and sustains his first significant knee injury. He signs with the Jets, leads them to victory in the Super Bowl and revels in life as a sex symbol, commercial superstar and eternal deity for Jets fans demoralized since 1969.

Further reading about Namath and “Namath:”

Conor Orr @ NJ.com talked to Namath at a preview screening of the film:

“I didn’t want to do it, are you kidding me? To talk about your life and all, it’s hard sometimes. It’s hard when you have parts of your life you don’t care to talk about or share,” Namath said a few minutes after seeing the revealing documentary.

The film includes new interviews with childhood friends, sportswriters and sportscasters like Sal Marciano, who covered Namath when he arrived in New York, and former on-field rivals and teammates. There’s plenty of archival footage, too, such as Namath and the Jets practicing in Peekskill, N.Y., then the team’s summer home.

“There are great shooting stars, and the likes of him will never, ever pass this way again,” Rams player-turned-actor Fred Dryer says in the film.

A gulf oil well goes wrong and a volcano erupts in Miami in the new Syfy movie “Swamp Volcano,” airing at 8 p.m. Saturday (Jan. 28). At 7 p.m. Sunday (Jan. 29), Discovery explores the “Secrets of the FBI.” At 8 p.m. Sunday, ABC (WGNO in New Orleans) airs the TV movie “A Smile as Big as the Moon,” starring John Corbett. Also at 8 p.m. Sunday, HBO re-launches its new drama, “Luck.”

There are thrilling, gorgeous horse-racing scenes and some intriguingly weird characters wedged deep inside the narrative, but it takes patience and even charity to wait them out. This nine-episode series is maddeningly and needlessly opaque, and so deferential to the rites and rituals of the track that the storytelling is labored and even joyless. It improves over time, but it’s not really until the finale that “Luck” quickens its pace and builds suspense and a sense of urgency.

Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3429. Read more TV coverage at NOLA.com/tv. Follow him at twitter.com/davewalkertp.